Where the Serpent Lives

A family in crisis - and the wider world of wildlife in crisis too. Rosamund, unable to communicate with her philandering husband or teenage son, alienated from her zoologist father, feels cut off also from the jungle world of her Indian childhood. What if she goes back into it

Rustling with animals of which most humans are unaware, set in London, ancient Devon woodland and the endangered forests of India, this is a eye-opening foray into love, terror and the place of wild nature in human lives.

“A novel you will not lightly forget. Only Emily Bronte has embraced Padel's radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life-- Guardian”

¿She has an exquisite way of telling a story¿ Andrew O¿Hagan ¿Padel brings a poet¿s intensity to her prose . . . her narrative spirals like a tropical plant, luxuriant with metaphor and imagery¿ Spectator ¿Compelling . . . only Emily Bronte has embraced Padel¿s radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life¿ Guardian ¿Padel¿s prose shines¿ Observer ¿Gripping and wonderfully original¿ Gillian Beer

Ruth Padel, author of Darwin - A Life in Poems and Tigers in Red Weather, is a award-winning poet and great great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin. Fellow of both the Royal Literary Society and Zoological Society of London, Writer in Residence at the Environment Institute, University College London, and one of our finest nature writers in poetry or prose.

A family in crisis - and the wider world of wildlife in crisis too. Rosamund, unable to communicate with her philandering husband or teenage son, alienated from her zoologist father, feels cut off also from the jungle world of her Indian childhood. What if she goes back into it Rustling with animals of which most humans are unaware, set in London, ancient Devon woodland and the endangered forests of India, this is a eye-opening foray into love, terror and the place of wild nature in human lives.

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